Barbara stole softly down the creaking stair in the gray obscurity of dawn, her shoes in one hand, a smoking candle in the other. There was much to be done, much to be thought of, and Jimmy must not wake up to hinder for two full hours yet.

It was cold in the kitchen, and the faint pink light streaming from the east shone in uncertainty through misted panes. Barbara sat down, her red lips sternly compressed, her dark brows drawn in a frowning line above her eyes, and applied herself briskly to lacing up her shoes. It was a relief to be accomplishing something real, tangible, after the whirling mist of dreams from which she had emerged shaken and breathless. Dreams of any description seldom visited Barbara’s healthily tired brain, but the vanished darkness of the past night had been haunted with confused visions. Now Stephen Jarvis was pursuing her through trackless forests, where long branches reached down like crooked, grasping hands. Always she managed to elude her pursuer and always he followed, his panting breath in her ears, till suddenly stumbling and falling through a vast crevasse in the darkness she found herself on a wide plain, starred with narcissus, swaying spirit-like in the bright air; high overhead white clouds floated and the winds of May blew cool fragrance into her face. At first she was alone, seeking for something, she knew not what; then David Whitcomb stood at her side.

“Come!” he cried imperiously, and his blue eyes pleaded with hers. “We must make haste to escape before the child overtakes us!”

She turned to follow his pointing finger and saw Jimmy running toward them, his arms outstretched, his bare, rosy feet stumbling amid the folds of his long white gown. Then, with the wild irrelevancy of dreams she heard the raucous voice of Thomas Bellows, the auctioneer from Greenfield Centre, shouting something indistinguishable in the far distance. Instantly the wide plain, the impassioned lover, and the running, stumbling little figure vanished. She was at home now, hurrying in anxious haste from room to room to find everything empty and desolate and the sun shining in through dimmed window-panes on the bare floors. Outside on the lawn a confused pile of household furniture, books, and carpets, looking sadly worn and old in the pitiless light of day, were being rapidly sold under the hammer.

“Here you are, ladies an’ gents,” shouted the auctioneer, “lot number twenty-four, a strong, healthy young woman, kind an’ willin’! A good cook an’ housekeeper. How much am I offered? Come, ladies, let me hear your bids!”

The faint light of morning touching her closed eyelids like a cool finger-tip suddenly aroused the girl to a consciousness of reality (if indeed the experiences of this mortal life be more real than dreams). She rose at once, dressed hastily, and having by now finished the lacing up of her shoes stood gazing out at the familiar door-yard with gathered brows.

“I ought,” said Barbara half-aloud in the silence of the kitchen, “to be good for something.” She looked down at her young strong hands; hands skilled in many uses, her forehead still puckered with unaccustomed thoughts.

Then she opened the back door quietly, for she was still mindful of the sleeping child above, and went out into the frosty dawn. A robin was singing loudly in the top of the budding elm down by the gate.

“Cheer up! Cheer up!” the jubilant bird voice seemed to be saying. Then the song ceased and the strong brown wings spread and carried the voice toward the dawn, which now flung long streamers of rose and gold athwart the frigid blue of the sky. A bright, cold moon swung low in the west and the distant houses of the village, huddled close among dark folds of the hills, began to send up delicate spirals of smoke which ascended and hung motionless in mid-heaven, like unshriven ghosts.

Peg Morrison was washing the mud off the wheels of the old buggy to the tune of Denis, lugubriously wafted to the winds of morning through his nose.

“Blest be-hee th’ tie-hi which bi-inds,
Aour ha-ur-uts in Chris-his-chun lo-ove;
Th’ fe-hell-o-shi-hip of ki-hin-dred mi-hinds,
Is li-hike to tha-hat above!”

“Peg!” cried Barbara, in her imperious young voice.

The old man stopped short in his rendition of Fawcett’s immortal stanzas, an apologetic smile over-spreading his features.

“Good-mornin’, Miss Barb’ry,” he said. “A nice, pleasant mornin’, ain’t it? Thinks I, I’ll wash up this ’ere buggy an’ make it look’s well’s I kin. Then, mebbe, ’long towards arternoon I’ll git ’round t’ call on th’ Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis. I reckon I——”

“No,” interrupted Barbara decidedly, “you mustn’t do that. It wouldn’t do any good,” she added, in anticipation of protest.

“It’s th’ matter o’ th’ onions I was thinkin’ o’ bringin’ to his attention,” said Peg, raising his voice. “‘F I c’n prove to th’ Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis that onions’ll raise that goll-durned mortgage within one year f’om date, I——”

“Peg,” protested Barbara indignantly, “how do you suppose I’m ever going to train Jimmy to speak properly if you persist in using such language?”

“Meanin’ th’ expression goll-durned, o’ course, Miss Barb’ry,” acquiesced the old man meekly. “You’re right, I ain’t no manner o’ business to use swear words b’fore ladies. But that consarned, measly——”

The girl stamped her foot impatiently.

“There’s no use talking to you,” she said sharply. “I’ll just have to keep Jimmy away from you.”

“Don’t do that, Miss Barb’ry; please don’t!” pleaded Peg. “I won’t do him no real harm. I ain’t no-ways vicious, ner—ner low-down; an’ that little chap—— Why, Miss Barb’ry, me an’ th’ Cap’n ’s been a chumin’ it sence he could crawl out t’ th’ barn on ’is han’s an’ knees. Ef he don’t fall int’ no worse comp’ny ’n Peleg Morrison’s, I guess the Cap’n ’ll come out all right. An’ you kin bet your bottom dollar onto it.”

Peg swashed the remaining water in his pail over the hind wheel of the buggy with an air of stern finality.

“Of course I know you’re good, Peg,” murmured Barbara contritely. “I didn’t mean——”

“Don’t mention it, Miss Barb’ry,” interrupted Mr. Morrison, with generous politeness. “Your tongue gits the start o’ your jedgment occasionally, same’s your pa’s ust to, but I shan’t lay it up ’gainst you. Any more”—and he raised his voice in anticipation of a possible interruption—“any more’n I done in the past.” His eyes twinkled kindly at the girl.

“I want you to harness the buggy for me after breakfast, Peg,” Barbara said soberly. “I’m going—somewhere on business, and I want to start early.”

“Blest be he th’ tie-hi which bi-inds.”

warbled Peg unmelodiously, as he stooped to apply his wet sponge to the rear springs.

“Did you hear me, Peg?” demanded Barbara.

The old man gazed reproachfully at the girl through the spokes of the wheel.

“W’y, I’m goin’ to use the horses fer ploughin’ this mornin’, Miss Barb’ry,” he said soothingly. “An’ they’ll be all tuckered out b’ night.”

“But there’s no use of doing any more ploughing. I told you that last week. Unless I can manage somehow to—to raise the money, the farm——”

“Don’t say it!” interrupted Peg. “I don’t b’lieve in namin’ troubles. It helps ’em to ketch a body, someway, to notice ’em too much. I b’lieve in actin’ ’s if the’ wa’nt anythin’ th’ matter ’s long ’s ye kin.”

“Yes, and while you’re doing it the mortgage will foreclose itself,” Barbara said, recalling Stephen Jarvis’ curt phrase with a thrill of anger. “You hitch up Billy for me and bring him around at seven o’clock. Will you do it, please, Peg?”

“The fe-hell-o-shi-hip of k-hin-dred mi-hinds!”

chanted Mr. Morrison, with entire irrelevance.

“Very well, if you won’t, I’ll walk. It’s ten miles there and back, but you won’t care, as long as you have your own way.”

“Where was you thinkin’ of goin’, Miss Barb’ry?” demanded Peg cautiously. “Ye know I ain’t set on anythin’ that ain’t fer your good—yours an’ the Cap’n’s.”

But Barbara had already disappeared in a flutter of angry haste.

“Now, I s’pose,” soliloquized Mr. Morrison, “that I’ll actually hev to give up ploughin’ the hill lot this mornin’, an’ all ’long o’ that young female.” He shook his head solemnly.

“O Lord!” he burst out, “you know Miss Barb’ry, prob’bly’s well’s I do. She’s a mighty nice girl an’ always hes been; but she’s turrible set in her ways, an’ I declar’ I can’t see what in creation she’s a-goin’ to do; what with everythin’—you know now—I’ve spoke ’bout it frequent enough. Then the’s the Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis—him that holds th’ mortgage—he wants t’ marry her. But I don’ trust that man, Lord. I don’t know how he looks to you. But to me he ’pears hard-fisted, an’ closer’n the bark to a tree, an’ I c’n tell you he licks the hide off’n his horses right along. But the’ may be some good in him. Ef the’ is, bring it out, O Lord, so ’t folks kin see it. An’ fix things up with Miss Barb’ry, somehow. Kind o’ overrule Jarvis an’ the mortgage an’ all the rest, the way you know how. Amen!”

Peleg Morrison was on intimate terms with his Creator, and on this occasion, as in the past, he derived such satisfaction from his converse with the Almighty that he was enabled presently to go on with his vocal exercises. The washing of the buggy was thus happily completed, the worn cushions dusted, and the horses fed and watered by the time the sun peeped over the fringes of dark woods. At seven o’clock, as he was tying the wall-eyed bay to the hitching-post in the side yard, Barbara appeared in the open door, a brown loaf in her hand.

“Here’s some fresh bread for your breakfast, Peg,” she said. She glanced at the horse. “I shan’t be gone very long. You can plough when I come back, if you want to. It won’t hurt the ground to plough it.”

“The mare’s kind o’ skittish this mornin’,” replied Peg, accepting the addition to his meagre bill of fare with an appreciative grin. “Mebbe I’d better go ’long an’ drive.” He glanced anxiously at the girl. “I wouldn’t do nothin’ rash ef I was you, Miss Barb’ry; like—like gittin’ engaged to be married, or anythin’ like that.”

“Don’t worry, Peg,” Barbara said soberly, “that’s precisely what I don’t mean to do.”

She felt entirely sure of herself now, even while her cheeks burned hotly at the remembrance of Jarvis’ look when he said, “I am your master.”

“I’ll scrub floors for a living,” she promised herself, “before I yield to him.”

All the pride of a strong nature shone in her eyes as she stooped over Jimmy, sitting at the table, his short legs dangling, his slate pencil squeakily setting down queer crooked figures in straggling rows.

“I’m ahead in my ’rithmetic,” the little boy announced triumphantly. “I’m doin’ reg’lar zamples. I like zamples. An’ bimeby I’ll be all growed up, an’ nen I’ll take care of you, Barb’ra.”

She kissed him underneath the short yellow curls in the back of his neck.

“Oh, Jimmy,” she sighed, “I wish you were grown up now!”

The child straightened himself anxiously.

“My head’s way above your belt when I stand up,” he said, “‘n’ I ate lots of brown bread an’ milk for breakfast. I’m growing jus’ as fast’s I can.”

Barbara hugged him remorsefully.

“You’re just big enough—for six,” she assured him. “And—and we’ll come out all right, somehow. We just will, precious!”

“‘Course we will,” echoed the child. He slipped from his chair and eyed his sister with a searching gaze.

“If you’re scared of anybody, Barb’ra,” he said valiantly, “I’ll take a big stick, ’n’—’n’—I’ll—I’ll—I won’t let anybody hurt you, Barb’ra!”

The girl laughed rather unsteadily as she hurried him into his coat and cap. “Learn a lot at school, dear,” she murmured, “and you’ll have the best kind of a big stick.”

The remembrance of his warm little arms about her neck comforted her as she drove the wall-eyed mare along the road. She was going to do a very strange thing. Something she had never heard of any woman doing before. Just how the idea had taken form and substance in her mind she did not know. She appeared to herself to have awakened with the resolve fully formed, distinctly outlined, even to the small details, which she busily reviewed while she was tying the horse before the house of Thomas Bellows, auctioneer. There was a shop in the lower front story of the house, which had once been a piazza, but now protruded with two bulging front windows to the edge of the sidewalk. The windows disclosed a variety of objects in the line of household appurtenances, clocks, flatirons, a pile of tin-ware, likewise a yellow placard reading, “Auction to-day,” surmounted by a professional flag of a faded red color.

Mr. Bellows himself, in blue overalls and a pink shirt, was occupied in wiping off an exceedingly dusty and ancient sewing machine with an oily rag. He looked up sharply as the discordant jangle of the bell announced the opening of his shop door.

“Good-mornin’, miss,” he said as Barbara entered. “If you don’t mind shuttin’ that door behind you. It beats all how cold the wind stays, don’t it? You want to look over some o’ these goods, heh? Household effects of the widow Small down to the Corners. Died las’ week, an’ her daughter don’t want to keep none o’ her things. They’ll be sold at two sharp. It ain’t a bad idea to cast yer eye around a little b’fore the biddin’ begins. Things show off better. Now this ’ere machine——”

“I don’t want to buy anything,” stammered Barbara. “I—want you to sell something for me.”

“Yas,” assented Mr. Bellows explosively, standing up and resting a grimy hand on either hip, the while he surveyed Barbara’s slim figure attentively. “Jus’ so! Well?” he added tentatively. “Sellin’ things fer folks is my business. What d’ye offer: goods, stock, or real estate? It’s all the same to me.”

“It—it isn’t—— Could you sell my work for me? I mean——”

The man stared hard at the girl, his squinting eyes puckered, his mouth drawn close at the corners.

“I’m a gen’ral auctioneer,” he announced conclusively. “It’s m’ business to sell household effects, stock, or real estate, on commission.”

“I want some money—a good deal of money,” Barbara went on, “and I want it right away.”

“I’ve seen folks in your fix before,” commented the auctioneer dryly, as he again applied himself to the sewing machine. “I gen’rally make out t’ sell what’s offered. But I can’t guarantee prices.”

“You sell horses, don’t you?” demanded Barbara.

“Horses? Sure!”

“And—and oxen. They’re meant to work, and people buy them to work. That’s what I want to do. I want to work for three—or four years, if I must; and I want the money all at once—in advance.”

“I don’t know as I ketch your idee,” said Mr. Bellows. “You want money, an’ you want it right away, an’ you want me to sell——”

“I want you to sell my work—honest work, housework, any kind of work that I can do, for—for a term of years.”

Mr. Bellows abandoned further efforts at bettering the condition of the late Widow Small’s sewing machine. He stood up and scowled meditatively at Barbara.

“Seems t’ me I’ve seen you b’fore, somewheres; haven’t I?”

“My name is Barbara Preston,” the girl said haughtily.

“An’ you want I should——”

“When people buy a horse they really buy and pay for the labor of that horse in advance,” Barbara said composedly. “I am more valuable than a horse. I have skill, intelligence; I wish to sell—my skill, my intelligence to the highest bidder.”

“Well, I swan!” exclaimed Mr. Bellows. Then he fell to laughing noisily, his wizened countenance drawn into curious folds and puckers of mirth.

Barbara waited unsmilingly.

“Say! d’you know I’ve been asked to sell mos’ everythin’ you ever heard of,” said Mr. Bellows, getting the better of his hilarity, “but I never was asked to sell—a girl. A good-lookin’, smart, likely girl. I guess you’re jokin’, miss. It wouldn’t do, you know.”

“Why wouldn’t it?” urged Barbara.

“Well, it wouldn’t; that’s all. I’ve got m’ reputation as an auctioneer to think about; an’—lemme see, your folks is all dead, ain’t they?”

“No,” said Barbara. “I have a brother six years old.”

Her dry tongue refused to add to this statement. She was conscious of an inward tremor of fear lest he should refuse.

“Whatever put such a curious notion into your head?” Mr. Bellows wanted to know.

“I may as well tell you,” the girl said bitterly. “You’ll be asked to sell me out soon. We’re going to lose everything we’ve got—Jimmy and I; the farm, the—furniture—everything.”

“You don’t say!” Mr. Bellows commented doubtfully. “Well, that had ought to net you something—eh?”

“We shan’t have anything; everything will be gone,” the girl said coldly.

“Sho! that’s too bad,” Mr. Bellows said good-naturedly. He stuck his thumbs into the arm-holes of his vest, and scowled absent-mindedly into space. Then he looked at Barbara again. “Mortgage—eh?” he suggested. “Coverin’ pretty much everythin’—eh?”

“Everything,” repeated Barbara, in a dull tone.

“Everythin’—save an’ exceptin’ one smart, willin’ young woman—eh? You’d ought to bring a purty good figger—in the right market.”

Mr. Bellows paused to give way to mirth once more.

“The matrimonial market’s the one partic’lar field I ain’t had much ’xperience in,” he concluded. “An’ auctionin’ off goods of the sort you mention ain’t ’xactly in my line, an’ that’s a fac’, miss. So I guess——”

“You don’t understand,” Barbara interrupted quickly. “Let me explain. When I found that everything was lost”—her voice trembled in spite of herself—“I thought at first I would teach school—let the farm go and teach——”

“Well, why don’t you do that?” Mr. Bellows inquired. He was a kind-hearted man, with sympathies somewhat blunted by his professional zeal in a calling which for the most part concerned itself with clearing away the wreckage of human hopes. “You’d make a right smart school-ma’am, I should say.”

“I’m not a normal school graduate,” Barbara told him. “Besides, they have no vacancies. Then I tried to get sewing to do. I can sew neatly. But I might easily starve on what I could earn with my needle. A woman told me she knew of someone who wanted—a—servant,” Barbara’s voice shook, but she went on bravely. “She said that people sometimes paid as much as twenty-five dollars a month for such work. And that it wasn’t easy to find women who could do that kind of work well. I said I would not work in another woman’s kitchen. But I—I am willing to do it, if I can sell my work for twelve hundred dollars.”

“Whew!” ejaculated Mr. Bellows.

“It sounds like a lot of money, I know,” Barbara went on; “but it is four years’ service at twenty-five dollars a month. I want it all at once. Then I can pay the mortgage on our farm, and keep it.”

“Huh!” commented Mr. Bellows explosively.

“I could lease the farm while I was working, and it would bring in enough money to take care of Jimmy.”

Her face clouded swiftly at the thought of the possible separation.

“Wall, I don’t know of anybody who’d be willin’ to pay down any twelve hundred dollars spot cash for a hired girl,” objected Mr. Bellows. “Y’ couldn’t get nobody to bid on a proposition like that. Y’ might”—the man hesitated, then went on harshly, “y’ might up an’ die, or——”

“A man on the farm next to ours paid three hundred dollars for a horse, and it died the next week,” Barbara said quietly. “Then he bought another. He had to have a horse.”

“Well, he owned it for good an’ all, an’ you——”

“I’ll work four years-or five for the money,” said Barbara steadily. “And I shall be worth far more than an ordinary servant.”

Mr. Bellows wagged his head argumentatively. “I’d hev to charge you five per cent.,” he warned her. “An’ you couldn’t get any bidders, anyhow.”

“That,” said Barbara, “would be my affair. What I want to know is, will you sell me?”

The blood hammered in her temples; her hands and feet were icy cold; but she eyed the man steadily.

Mr. Bellows had been making a rapid mental calculation.

“W’y, I don’ know,” he said, scratching his head reflectively. “I don’t want to go int’ no fool job fer nothin’. M’ time’s valu’ble.”

“I’ll pay you—ten dollars, if—if—no one buys me,” said Barbara faintly.

Mr. Bellows bit his thumb-nail thoughtfully.

“All right!” he burst out at length. “You name the day, git th’ bidders t’gether an’ I’ll auction ye off. Gracious! It don’t sound right, some way.”

He looked at the girl carefully, real human kindness in his eyes and voice.

“Who holds your mortgage, anyhow?” he asked indignantly. “I sh’d think most anybody’d be ashamed o’ themselves t’ drive a nice young woman like you to——”

“If I can realize enough money to pay what I owe I shall be—glad,” the girl said. “I am obliged to work hard anyway. My plan will pay, if it succeeds; don’t you see it will?”

“W’y, yes; I see all right. I don’t b’lieve you c’n work it, though,” was Mr. Bellows’ opinion.

Barbara did not explain her intentions further. She requested Mr. Bellows to say nothing of what had passed between them, and this he readily promised.

“‘Tain’t a matter t’ make common talk of,” he agreed, with a dubious shake of the head. “The’s folks that might not ketch the right idee. Sellin’ a pretty girl at auction ’ud draw a crowd all right; but I’d advise you t’ let me use my jedgment ’bout biddin’ ye in, if it’s necessary.”